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David Mason Says Farewell as Poet Laureate

Published on August 13, 2014

Colorado College English Professor David Mason ’78 will step down from his four-year position as Colorado’s poet laureate soon, as a new poet is expected to be named the first week of September. Mason talks about his time as the state’s poet laureate and his new book of poetry, “Sea Salt,” on “Colorado Matters,” a Colorado Public Radio show.

“It has been a privilege to travel the state these past four years, doing what I could to bring poetry to people of all ages, all backgrounds,” said Mason, who was named to the position in 2010 by then-Gov. Bill Ritter. “There is a deep hunger for poetry's articulateness, for memorable speech that cuts through the noise and detritus and triviality of contemporary life. The best poetry is a way of being genuine and a way of living more lives than one. Lecturing, performing, leading classes and listening, I felt myself a medium for the necessary. Cities or small towns, the hunger was the same.”

In the radio interview, Mason talks about visiting some of the far corners of the state and some of the memorable people he met.

One of his goals was to travel to all 64 Colorado counties. He got to 60 of them, sometimes without a formal engagement or invitation to visit. “It’s hard to get invitations to some places,” he said.

Mason also reads two poems in the radio interview from “Sea Salt,” a poetry collection that spans the last decade. One of the poems is “The Blue of the Bay,” written after the Aurora movie theater shooting in 2012.